


Fractured

by Hormonal_Trashbag



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5877115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hormonal_Trashbag/pseuds/Hormonal_Trashbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hatred, Master Luke warned, would be her undoing. It would twist her into darkness. She couldn't feel hatred though, when she finally faced her adversary once more. Instead, she was overwhelmed with pity for a man who had been broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fractured

**Author's Note:**

> Not exactly new to the Star Wars fandom, but this is the first time I've felt strong enough about a ship to write about it and I just love the concept of a Sith being seduced by the light sooo... I guess I'm just testing the waters.

Master Luke had always told her to let go of her hatred, even towards her enemy, because it would lead to the dark side. It would be her undoing, if she let it fester, he had said. Rey believed him, but it was impossible to fully heed his warning. He knew what Kylo Ren had done to his father, even though Rey had never mustered the courage to actually tell him, and though he was tight-lipped about it, she sensed he had done something equally deplorable to Luke. Something he hadn’t foreseen, despite his wisdom. Something he hadn’t been able to prevent.

She knew he had just as much reason to justify hating Kylo Ren as she did, but he still lectured how crucial it was to give up resentment and fury.

Rey did _try_. The rest of her training came easily; she truly felt the force and its constant flow around her and every other living being. It was second-nature to use it, to draw from it, and often it gave her peace she hadn’t known. But in the back in her mind, she couldn’t forget what Kylo had done. And forgiving him was out of the question.

No matter how hard she tried to hide this hatred from Luke, she was certain he could sense it.

Maybe that was why he had ordered her to get back onto the Falcon and find a place she could thoroughly search her feelings and understand what it meant to hate another being. She couldn’t find complete harmony within herself in the temple, so she would have to find it somewhere else. But until she did that, continuing her training was not possible.

Chewbacca, nothing if not sympathetic, flew with her across the galaxy.

It seemed preordained that she found the silence she needed to think on an icy planet in the Hoth system. The last time she had seen Kylo Ren, they had been surrounded by snow, and now she found herself swimming in it.

Still, she let the quiet of Hoth come over her. The cold was strangely serene, the frozen wind cleansing. Chewbacca took her to an abandoned rebel base, and when she asked him to, he agreed to leave, to let her meditate without distraction.

It seemed like a perfectly liable plan, to stay alone on a very isolated planet, until she found herself face-to-face with the very person she couldn’t stop hating.

It was a relatively warm day for Hoth, and instead of meditating in the ruins of the base, she ventured outside. She wasn’t sure how he had tracked her, but he _had,_ and now he stomped through the snow towards her, stopping only when close enough for his voice to be heard over the wind.

“Scavenger,” he said. It sounded less like a greeting and more like an accusation.

Her response was silence.

While in their last interactions, he had hid behind a mask, Kylo now gave up obscuring his face. The scar she had given him stretched across it in pale pink, and perhaps he thought it was frightening enough to forgo the mask.

She met his harsh gaze, felt his anger and confusion and unrest, and her own turbulence seemed to clear away. He was more exposed now than he ever had been before, and she could see every sleepless night, every moment of self-doubt, every inch he’s pulled himself towards the darkness etched into his face. Confronting him now, she couldn’t muster that exhaustive loathing she had once held, and was instead washed with pity.

“Ben,” she finally said in return.

She watched as his full lips, forever pulled into a pout, as it contorted into a scowl at the name she used.

“I’m not _Ben,”_ he forced through grit teeth. “Just because Han Solo called me that doesn’t mean you can.”

She made a step closer. His hands were fists at his sides.

“He was your father,” she said, as if to remind him. “You can’t face that though, can you? Especially now.”

His eyebrows cinched together, his voice was clipped. “What--”

The agitation she felt in him showed in his eyes, and she moved closer still. The wind whipped them with painful intensity, blew his hair from his forehead.

“You love him. You thought if he was gone, it would be easier to follow down Darth Vader’s twisted path.”

Rey was nearer now. Where they had been yards apart, they were a few feet. Vulnerability creased his face as he took a step back.

“Stop it!” he snarled.

Looking at Kylo Ren now, frightening was not a word she could use to describe him. His shoulders jutted forward in a defensive hunch that only made him appear more like the damaged boy he was. She watched his clenched hands shake.

“What would some abandoned scavenger from Jakku know?” he lashed out.

Her flat stare fixed on his brown eyes, and she continued. “It didn’t help though. In fact, it’s only made it harder.”

 _“Get out of my head!”_ he barked. She only inched towards him. “You could never understand--”

“The loneliness?” she interrupted with a wry tone. “The fear that I’m not strong enough, or good enough, or worth anything?”

He clutched his head, curled forward far enough to block his face. His voice was a strangled roar. _“I told you to stop! Stop, stop, stop--”_

Her voice was hushed. “No.”

He crumpled towards the ground to kneel in the snow. Like a wounded animal, he hissed. She watched his gloved fingers dig into his scalp, his shoulders shuddering under a sudden weight he couldn’t lift and she sighed, filling what little distance there was left between them.

“Please, stop,” he pleaded, his voice sounding thick. “I can’t go back. It’s too late. I can’t.”

Rey shook her head, because she could understand so clearly now, what she was meant to do. Kylo Ren--Ben--was never supposed to make the mistakes of his grandfather, but he had been guided into the darkness by a shadow that had hung over his cradle. He wasn’t blameless, but she felt sorrow for him, and the force spoke through her.

She slowly exhaled, before dropping a hand to cover his clawed one. The force flowed from her, warm and purifying, and into him.

“Come with me,” she breathed. “Help me end this conflict and redeem yourself to your mother and father. You can still do that much.”

He shook his head from under her hand, no longer able to form coherent words as sobs wracked his entire being. She stroked his dark hair, shushing him as his mother once had, when he had come to her weeping with fear as a child.

“She misses you,” she told him.

“No--”

“She wants her son home. I know you can feel it too.”

He looked up at her with moist eyes, rimmed with red, his lips quivering. “She doesn’t.”

“She does,” Rey disagreed, sweeping her fingers through his hair. “More than anything.”

She lowered to her knees before sitting flat beside him. He was silent, uncertain. Her hand moved to cup the same cheek Han had caressed before he had fallen, and he clenched his eyes shut, his hand coming up to spread over hers. This was his first human contact he’d had in the year since his father’s death. Again, she felt the ache of his loneliness, one that mirrored her own.

His tone was a mixture of hurt and bitterness. “Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to tempt me?”

She laughed softly, stroking the scar she had given him with her thumb. “Would you be tempted by the light if you were really evil?”

He squeezed her fingers tight, his expression fragmenting again as he toppled forward to press his face to the crook of her neck. His breath was hot; it seeped into the thick layers she wore, and she held him as he fell to pieces.

“You belong in the light, Ben,” she murmured into his hair. “Give into what you know to be true.”

His arms dropped around her waist, and he gripped her for support. She sensed his heavy shame, his self-loathing, his confusion, and held him up. He had such goodness in him, she could feel the dark struggling to keep him under it’s shadow. Just as it had since he turned to the persuasion of Snoke.

“You have people who will love you and forgive you.” There was an unsaid, and _I don’t,_ they both heard, but she pushed past it. “You’ve done terrible things, but you can do good too. You’ve seen it.”

His voice was hoarse and small and it cracked as he spoke. “I know.”

“You’re not too far gone.”

His silence was unconvinced, but he nodded.

“Will you come with me?”

There was a hush, but she felt no more fight in him. Finally, he gave another nod, short and sharp.

She felt herself being purged alongside him, and over the horizon, she saw the Millennium Falcon approach.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, that's my first Reylo fic. Comments and kudos are, of course, appreciated. :)


End file.
